The State Department today added Ajnad Misr, an Egyptian jihadist group, and Ibrahim Rubaish, a senior al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) official, to the US government’s list of specially designated global terrorists.
Nasir al Wuhayshi, who is the emir of AQAP as well as al Qaeda’s general manager, has released a poem praising Ayman al Zawahiri as the “Sheikh father.” A video from two leading AQAP ideologues decrying the “slander” of jihadist leaders was released shortly afterwards. Al Qaeda members are trumpeting the messages as rebuttals to the Islamic State and its newly announced caliphate.